


It's always been you

by Nigg



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chatlogs, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, First Dates, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Mentions of Other Voltron Paladins, Minor Hunk/Shay (Voltron), Mutual Pining, Oblivious Lance (Voltron), Oblivious Pidge | Katie Holt, Pilot Lance (Voltron), Post-Canon, Team Voltron Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 21:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17271635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nigg/pseuds/Nigg
Summary: “See? We are safely back! Told you that bringing an alien with us was the best way to be sure not to be abducted,” a loud boisterous voice interrupted her musings.“Ugh, you made this joke at least two hundred times in the past months. Shiro, please, end my misery and kill me, or take him away from me. I don’t want to see him for at least one year now!” Another voice replied.Shiro.The name made a spark of something light and warm crackle in her chest. She turned and saw the three pilots walking slowly along the corridor, still in their armors, with tired expressions, ruffled hair and their helmets in their hands.“Keithy boy, you wound me. I thought we were pals! Buddies?” The first voice replied.Lance.They were back.--After the War is over, everyone has moved on with their life, found a job helping the Universe maintain its newfound peace. Pidge works as a scientist on Earth with her family and loves her job more than anything, but there is just one little thing missing.





	It's always been you

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This was a gift for @zenzenzence on Tumblr, written for @voltronsecretsanta2k18, I hope you will like it!

The cafeteria was almost empty. It was late at night but Pidge had lost the notion of time experimenting with some new crystals the Alteans had brought during their last visit to Earth. She sighed, moving the spoon aimlessly in the now cold bowl of soup. Things were simpler now that the War was over, they weren’t threatened by some new Galra at any given moment, they weren’t constantly fighting or running, but they were also lonelier. Everyone was doing their best to make sure peace was maintained everywhere. Allura, Romelle and Coran traveled around the Galaxies offering their help when needed, sometimes joined by Krolia and her Blades. Hunk had moved to Balmera, to work as an ambassador and be with his girlfriend Shay. He visited quite often but it was not the same. As for Keith, Lance and Shiro, they were living the dream of their life, working as pilots for the now intergalactic Galaxy Garrison. Which left her on Earth with her family. She was a scientist, and she loved her job more than anything, but sometimes, just sometimes, she thought back to when it was just the seven of them in the Castle of Lions, running away from Zarkon, discovering new alien civilizations and technologies. It was scary, true, but there were also the laughs, the friendships, the bond that only sharing such an intense experience can create.

“See? We are safely back! Told you that bringing an alien with us was the best way to be sure not to be abducted,” a loud boisterous voice interrupted her musings.

“Ugh, you made this joke at least _two hundred times_ in the past months. Shiro, please, end my misery and kill me, or take him away from me. I don’t want to see him for at least one year now!” Another voice replied.

_Shiro_. The name made a spark of something light and warm crackle in her chest. She turned and saw the three pilots walking slowly along the corridor, still in their armors, with tired expressions, ruffled hair and their helmets in their hands.

“Keithy boy, you wound me. I thought we were pals! Buddies?” The first voice replied.

_Lance_.

They were back.

She didn’t realize she was running towards the door, until she collapsed face first into the glass it was made of with a thump.

“Pidge? Oh my god, is that you?” Lance said peeking from the other side. “You are taller!”

“Seriously, Lance? You haven’t seen her in ages and the thing you go with is ‘you are taller’?” Keith teased and moved to open the door to help her. When she confirmed she was okay, her attention returned to the three of them.

“Hey!” She said awkwardly, trying to tame the embarrassment of her entrance. “How are you guys? How was the mission?”

“We are fine, thank you Pidge, it’s good to see you!” Shiro replied, opening his arms for a hug. She happily went and let the contact linger before turning to offer the same greeting to the others. She had just been thinking about how much she had missed them.

“Now I’d better go and separate these two before they give me another headache with their bickering,” Shiro continued. “Seriously, how could I think it was a good idea to choose them for the same team.”

Pidge chuckled. “Don’t even try that, Shiro, I know you love them.”

“Yeah, I really do…” Shiro said, squeezing both Keith and Lance with his arms as they squeaked. “But after eight long months alone with them, I need a vacation. Or ten. Keith, let’s go, come on. Say hi.”

“And don’t forget our date tomorrow, Keithy,” Lance called with a wink as the two began to walk away, waving at them.

Keith groaned but nodded and gave him a thumbs up before turning away.

“You two are exactly the same,” Pidge commented, shaking her head.

Lance smiled fondly. “You don’t change a winning team. And he is a very good friend, I know he doesn’t mean it when he says that he wants to kill me… Probably.” He shrugged. “By the way, what are you doing here? My sense of time might be a bit fuzzy right now but isn’t it a bit late to be at work?

“I got caught up finishing an experiment, I was just eating something at the cafeteria before I go home.” Then, more hushed, she added. “But I’m glad I got to see you.”

She blushed, looking away and hoping he didn’t hear.

“CAFETERIA! What a magic word!” He raised his hands, eyes so wide and shining he looked right out of a comic book. “Oh yes, please, Earth food!”

With a relieved breath, Pidge laughed at his antics. “Don’t you want to have a shower? Or go home?”

“Yes but, REAL FOOD,” Lance replied.

“Ok, fine, come, you can use my card.”

“You are a real angel, Pidge.”

“Yes, yes, whatever.”

They went back to Pidge’s table and Lance jumped from one foot to the other, looking at the admittedly not so small selection the place offered, the Garrison had an amazing cafeteria when compared to other workplaces. Pidge couldn’t help but smile to herself despite knowing she would regret giving him free access to her meal card as she threw away the forgotten soup and waited for him to order.

He came back carrying three full trays of food. Pasta, sandwiches, salad, fries and at least three different cakes. Pidge gave him a pointed look, raising an eyebrow to which he retorted, almost looking offended, “Eight months, Pidge. Don’t you remember how awful the food goo was?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

He rubbed his hands and began to stuff his mouth with the content of the first tray, asking between mouthfuls if Pidge wanted to taste anything.

At first, she refused, too amused by the content expression he was wearing while savoring each dish, then she remembered she was technically paying for all of that and joined in.

“So, anything interesting happened while I was away?” Lance asked, laying back on his chair and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, signaling he wasn’t asking about work or politics.

Pidge huffed. “Not really… I mean, Hunk will probably ask Shay to marry him before the end of the year but it was kind of expected… Other than that, I don’t really know much about the others. The last time Allura visited, it was only to ask us to run some tests on these crystals they found.”

She looked away, trying not to flinch at the mention of Allura’s name. It was probably the one he was most interested in hearing but it never stopped stinging a bit.

“Oh, yeah, we met them at a Marmoran base a couple of quintants ago, Coran was so excited about those.” He leaned on his hand over the table to meet her eyes. “What about you?”

“Me? Well, there’s not much to say, I’m a workaholic, I don’t really have time to go out.”

“And you tell me that I haven’t changed a bit,” Lance shook his head with a small smile on his lips. “Well then, to pay you back for this dinner, I will take you out before I leave for my next mission. You need to take breaks sometimes, it’s important for your skin. And your health in general, of course.”

“Hm… Okay?” She replied, not completely sure this was a good idea. But she knew how stubborn Lance was and there was no way she could avoid something he had set his mind to.

“Good!” He commented, louder than was necessary in the little space between them, he was probably starting to feel the exhaustion for the mission. “I am busy tomorrow but we can go the day after? I know just the perfect place!”

“Oh, right. Your date with Keith… Is there something I don’t know? Did you finally stop running after Allura like a smitten puppy?” She said with a smirk.

“What?? I haven’t been hitting on Allura since… Come on, that was just plain rude. But for your information, no there’s nothing you don’t know, my ‘date’” - he accentuated the word making air quotes with his fingers - “is just a little tradition we have, meet for dinner the day after the mission to talk about what went wrong and what we can improve. It’s for team building, and because our view on things is basically the opposite, so we can compensate one another, like pieces of an engine.”

“Wow that’s… Incredibly mature of you,” Pidge commented before she could think about what she was implying with her surprised tone. “Sorry, I… Didn’t mean it like that.”

Lance just shrugged. “No, it’s okay. I get it. But we have all come a long way since we were four lost kids and a Shiro thrown out into Space, right?”

“Yeah, we have.”

She was lost in her thoughts for a quiet moment, the wave of nostalgia hitting her for the second time that night, until she spotted something over Lance’s last tray that brought her back to the present, especially because she was completely sure it wasn’t in the cafeteria’s selection.

“Are those peanut butter cookies??”

Lance’s eyes widened as he scratched the back of his neck. “Hm… Yeah… They were in the menu and…”

“No, they were not! I would know, I come here every day.”

“You’re right. You are always too smart to me,” he said with an odd tone Pidge couldn’t quite decipher. “I found them at a Space Mall, you can have them, if you want.”

“Thank you!” She grabbed the packet and took one of the biscuits, smiling gratefully. “They are so good!”

“I’m glad you like them,” he smiled. “I’d better go now, thank you for keeping me company and for, you know,” he motioned for the now empty trays.

“Anytime. That’s what friends are for, stealing food from them while remembering the good old times,” she laughed, munching on another cookie.

“Yeah… Good night, Pidgey.”

 

***

  
  


***

 

Pidge, most definitely, didn’t spend the entire day trying to decide what to wear for her evening with Lance. They were just friends and her appearance didn’t matter, especially considering he had known her since she was pretending to be a Garrison student, dressed as a boy with messed and awfully-cut hair and Matt’s glasses. There was no way he would make a fuss about it now. Still, she didn’t remember another time in which the two of them had gone out alone together on purpose. That was the only reason why she was a little on edge, it would have been the same with Keith, or Romelle.

It was also true that, especially after the Meme Kingdom incident - meaning, that one time just after the end of the War when Matt and Lance accidentally discovered their mutual passion for vines and everything related and fell platonically in love with one another - they had gotten incredibly closer, more than she was with the others, except for Matt and Hunk, of course. So she had absolutely no reason to be nervous.

Taking a deep breath, she looked at her reflection in the mirror for the hundredth time. Her hair was still short but the cut was a lot more defined than it used to and her glasses were now the correct size. She was wearing light jeans and a nice green shirt with leaves embroidered around the neck. It was warm outside, so she only carried a light white jacket over her shoulders for good measure. Nothing too fancy but not too sloppy either.

When the bell rang, she petted her dog, checking everything was in order one last time before going out.

“Hey!” Lance greeted with a warm smile.

“Hi.”

“So, I wanted to borrow my mother’s car? Because it would have been more comfortable and all but… She said she didn’t trust me with it. I am one of Earth’s best pilots, my job is _quite literally_ to drive things, yet she didn’t trust me with her car.” He complained, sounding like he still didn’t believe it. “Anyway, since I couldn’t take the car, I had to come up with something last minute and” - he moved to the side, revealing the hoverbike parked behind him - “I borrowed this. My friend assured me it’s perfectly safe.”

“By ‘your friend’ you mean Keith? Because I’m not sure I would trust him when it comes to safety.”

Lance ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I’m sorry, we can walk and go somewhere else, it’s just… I really wanted to show you this place and I didn’t know where to find another car in such a short time.” He looked so unsure, Pidge almost regretted complaining.

“It’s okay, I trust you to be careful and not kill me. We both know Matt would never forgive you if you do,” she smirked, making him chuckle.

“True, he would probably skin me alive or something. But thank you for your trust. Let’s go?”

Pidge nodded, following him to the bike and sitting with her hands securely to his side. “Ready whenever you are.”

Lance threaded his way among the traffic, driving smoothly and with ease and soon they reached their destination. When he stopped, Pidge jumped down with a big grin plastered on her face from the adrenaline of the speed, which only grew bigger when she took notice of the place they were in front of.

“What is this?” She asked in awe.

Lance put their helmets back in the small trunk of the bike and returned her smile. “It’s new. It opened just before I left for the mission so I couldn’t tell you before but I was sure you would like it.”

“Yes, I love it! Let’s go, I want to see the rest. Let me buy you a drink.”

“Okay, sure,” Lance chuckled as she sprinted towards the door. There was a sign above it, reading _The Steampunk Coffee_ , lit in a green light and surrounded by pieces of engines, wheels and cogs that swirled when she opened.

“This is so amazing,” she could feel her cheeks warm and her eyes sparkled with excitement.

“Wait until you see the tables!” Lance yelled.

And he was right. They sat at a corner and ordered two very colorful drinks with names like Geoffrey Bernard, or Joshua Gideon, or whatever, she could barely read, rapt as she was. The table was a large glass plate with all different kinds of tools glued to the bottom, from writing utensils, to watches, to lamps, to a mechanical keyboard.

“I’m glad you like it,” Lance smiled, and in the dim light of the shop, it looked so soft Pidge’s heart skipped a beat. She had known she had feelings for him for a very long time already, from when they still where the Paladins of Voltron running around the Universe, and she had come to accept it and mastered the art of hide and ignore to almost perfection.

Key-word being _almost_.

She sipped idly at her drink trying to search her brain for anything to start a conversation with and coming up empty-handed.

“So, what are you working on, right now? Except for the crystal?” The voice reached her like it was coming from under-water but the words felt like a lifeline. Work, that was something she could talk about for ages. Safe, easy, harmless.

So she did. Delved into all the details of her new project and asked him about the mission, how it was going with the team, which new planets they had visited. A known territory. Something they had shared for many years and they were both still passionate about. From there, the conversation flew to the most disparate topics without a hitch. Smooth, comfortable, interesting. She didn’t notice how fast the time was passing until the bartender signaled they were about to close.

When she said goodbye and closed the door to her home, Pidge slumped down on the floor, her traitorous brain working a mile a minute with different scenarios, all equally unattainable. It made her unable to focus, or find the will to walk to her bedroom and try to sleep. That night, everything had been perfect but nothing had changed, they were still friends, Lance still didn’t return her feelings and come the following day, she would have to fall back on her usual routine of hide, ignore, accept.

 

***

  


***

  


***

  


***

 

Logically, Pidge knew she was acting childishly. Avoid talking to Lance wasn’t a solution she could use in the long term. Not only because it was weird for their friends but because she didn’t want to lose him. She just needed more time, to forget how warm and happy she had felt after their ‘date’, stop her heart from fluttering in her chest just at the thought of him.

Maybe their new mission was the perfect opportunity. He would be away for weeks, or months, and she would get to see Hunk, the only person who knew about the whole… _thing_. So that when they would come back, she could act normally around him again.

She walked to the hangar without really thinking, letting her feet carry her along the familiar path. She had said goodbye to her father and brother there all those years ago and, after the War, she had said goodbye to so many people, so many times from that same place. She thought about what Keith said, about going with them. It was true the Garrison treated the five of them differently, considering the part they had played in saving the Universe, so they would probably agree, but she had a job to do. She wouldn’t let missing her friends or anything else get in the way of that. The experiments they were running on Earth were just as important as any space mission and even if they were gradually teaching other people to deal with Altean technology and crystals, everyone still relied on her father and her when it came to important decisions or risky operations.

So she wished good luck, promised to give Hunk a hug for them all and asked to call when they could. Then, she left them to finish their packing and went back to the cafeteria. It almost felt like a deja-vu. She sat at the table she had shared with Lance the previous week, her finger grazing the smooth surface and a small smile playing on her lips.

It was going to be okay.

“Don’t you think there is something missing?”

Pidge froze, recognizing the voice.

“What are you doing here?” She asked and slowly raised her head in time to see Lance scratch the back of his neck with his hand, looking sheepish.

“I kinda wanted to see Hunk? And between Keith and Matt and… You know, I didn’t get to spend much time with my family? Plus, I’ve never asked for a vacation since the end of the War and… Shiro said this mission is easy so they won’t probably need me.”

Pidge raised a suspicious eyebrow. “You hate it when you feel like Shiro and Keith treat you as the third wheel in the team, what are you hiding?”

“I… Ugh, fine. I hated leaving things hanging between us like that. I know we are just friends and everything, but I thought… Did I do something wrong? Didn’t you enjoy yourself at the Steampunk Coffee? Because I don’t even know how I got the courage to ask you out that day? It was the atmosphere, you were buying me food and we were laughing so I just… Didn’t think much and did it? But then at Matt’s you wouldn’t even look at me and I just” - he shut his mouth abruptly and shook his head - “Sorry, this is probably stupid. I must have read the situation completely wrong. I’ll go home now. I’m really sorry, it must have been wishful thinking, I’m so stupid.”

He turned, starting to walk away before Pidge could even blink. She was struggling quite a lot to process everything he had just said but there wasn’t time for that now.

“Please, stop!” She called and before she could second-guess herself, she took his hand in her own. “You didn’t do anything wrong, it was perfect. I was the one who didn’t want to be delusional.” She looked intently at her shoes to avoid eye-contact.

“Delusional? Why would you be-”, he stopped, probably as realization hit him. Pidge dared a side glance to see his expression and the way he was beaming was blinding.

“Yeah,” she confirmed, just to be sure.

His grip on her hand tightened. “Really? You like me too? What, how, when… Why?”

He looked so insecure but hopeful, she couldn’t help her mind from conjuring the word _adorable_. She laughed, taking a step closer. “Since forever, I think. How can I not?”

“We are such disasters. I thought you liked Keith! He told me it wasn’t true but…”

“And I thought you liked Allura!” She retorted, before the meaning of his words really registered. “Wait, Keith? Why Keith?”

“You go on for hours talking about your cryptids and you even planned to go on a trip together once!”

“Yes, because we are very good friends and you all don’t like talking about that stuff so we leave you out of it. Unlike you and Matt,” she added the last part a bit sarcastically, offering a playful smirk.

Lance chuckled. “Yeah, you are right.” He tapped his finger lightly over the back of her hand, his smile becoming tentative and shy. “So… Would you like to go on a proper date with me?”

She took another step, pressing her head to his chest. “How is that even a question,” she said into his shirt and when he laughed in response, the sound reverberated through his chest, sounding so free, unhindered, it made her feel impulsive for the second time that day, and probably even in her life. She looked up at him with all the affection she had never let her eyes show, years of longing, hoping, hiding.

“Yes, me too,” he whispered, before brushing his lips first over her forehead then her nose.

And there’s that saying that things come in threes, right? So it was no wonder that Pidge’s brain decided to shut down once again that day, letting her make another impulsive decision as she shifted her weight to the tips of her toes. Lance’s eyes widened considerably when he realized what she was about to do but he made no move to stop it. If anything, he pressed closer. 

The taste, the warmth of his skin and his scent enveloped her and, in that moment, she knew that even if she had had to wait for ten, or even twenty years more, it would have still been worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want, leave a comment letting me know what you think or come find me on Tumblr @onpointedfeetandbrokendreams !! Happy Holidays!


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